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Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes about Writing

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I think there is an enormous diference between speaking and writing. One rereads what one writes. But one might read it slowly or quickly. In other words, you do not know how long you will have to spend deliberating

I think there is an enormous diference between speaking and writing. One rereads what one writes. But one might read it slowly or quickly. In other words, you do not know how long you will have to spend deliberating over a sentence. ... But if I listen to a tape recorder, the listening time is determined by the speed at which the tape turns and not by my own needs.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Thinking, Long

What I regretted in La Nausee was not to have put myself completely into the thing. I remained outside my hero's disease, protected by my neurosis which, through writing, gave me happiness.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Hero, Writing, Neurosis

This desire [to write] is rather strange all the same and is not without a certain "cracked" quality.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Desire, Quality

Originally, poetry creates the myth, while the prose-writer draws its portrait.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Portraits, Myth
"What Is Literature?: And Other Essays".

Many young people today do not concern themselves with style. They think that what one says should be said simply and that is all. For me, style - which does not exclude simplicity, quite the opposite - is above all a way of saying three or four things in one. There is the simple sentence, with its immediate meaning, and then at the same time, below this immediate meaning, other meanings are organized. If one is not capable of giving language this plurality of meaning, then it is not worth the trouble to write.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Simple, Thinking
Jean-Paul Sartre (1978). “Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays”

As long as the writer cannot write for the two billion men who are hungry, he will be oppressed by a feeling of malaise.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Men, Two

Then I realized what separated us: what I thought about him could not reach him; it was psychology, the kind they write about in books. But his judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Book, Writing, Psychology

In Les Mots I explain the origin of my madness, of my neurosis. This analysis may help the young who dream of writing.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Dream, Writing, Analysis

You see, the contemporary writer must write through his intimations of unease, while trying to elucidate them.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Trying, Contemporary

In the nineteenth century one had to give all sorts of guarantees and lead an exemplary life in order to cleanse oneself in the eyes of the bourgeois of the sin of writing, for literature is, in essence, heresy. The situation has not changed except that it is now the Communists, that is, the qualified representatives of the proletariat, who as a matter of principle regard the writer as suspect.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Eye, Order

When my relations with the Communist Party gave me the necessary perspective I decided to write my autobiography. I wanted to show how a man can pass from literature held sacred to action which nevertheless remains that of an intellectual.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Party, Writing, Men

I considered calmly that I was born to write.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Born

Everything in my past, in my training, everything that has been most essential in my activity up to now has made me above all a man who writes, and it is too late for that to change.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Past, Men
Jean-Paul Sartre (1978). “Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays”

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